One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show is a funny exposé of identity politics

Theatre review: One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show carries an acute – yet never parodic – self-awareness and is all the better for it.

Few in this country remember the African-American playwright Don Evans: a pity, since there’s nothing like this 1982 comedy in the British repertoire. Taking its lead from mainstream black US sitcoms of the era, it’s an often extremely funny exposé of identity politics within an aspirational black family who live in a posh (ie white) Philadelphia neighbourhood.

Myra Harrison is determined her family will eat ‘franch’ food for dinner (even if she can’t pronounce ‘bourguignon’) and has nothing but distaste for lower-class black people. So she’s horrified to learn her libidinous son Felix is dating a girl, Li’l Bits, from the wrong side of town. And when her niece Beverley arrives with her raw, Southern ability to see right through hypocrisy, Myra’s ‘bougie’ pretensions start to teeter.

Like many sitcoms, Evans’s play is basically a relatively plotless assortment of excellent one-liners. Nodding to the artifice, director Dawn Walton stages the play as a live TV show and much of the deliberately oversized acting carries an acute – yet never parodic – self-awareness.

It works brilliantly, with Jocelyn Jee Esien particularly terrific as the beleaguered Myra (‘I wish I was white so I could faint’). The production could lose 20 minutes and it’s a pity Evans doesn’t skewer deeper black class antagonisms – the politics are ultimately more sexual than racial – although there’s no better exchange than the one between Felix and Li’l Bits. ‘That’s what comes from listening to white folks.’ ‘Poor folks, baby! I’ve been listening to poor folks!’